August is always one of the quietest months for new exhibitions, and this year is no different, but we do have one big event to alert you to, as well as two splendid shows that only have weeks to run. The one major opening is Gwen John: Strange Beauties at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh. Running from August 1 to January 4, this is a comprehensive retrospective of the work of the woman perhaps now seen as Wales's most significant artist, born 150 years ago this year. Maybe a little too comprehensive, according to some of the reviews of the show when it was on at the National Museum in Cardiff. The exhibition goes on to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut, in February and then at the end of July next year to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. We saw a rather smaller Gwen John exhibition in Chichester in 2023. Last chance to see.... Ending on August 23 is the exhibition at the Lakenhal in Leiden ...
Mary, Queen of Scots: She acceded to the throne when just six days old, spent her childhood in France, was married three times and was forced to abdicate by an uprising. She fled south seeking the protection of her cousin Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen of England. But the Catholic Mary had once claimed the crown of the Protestant Elizabeth, and she spent nearly two decades in custody, never actually coming face-to-face with her cousin, before she was eventually executed for plotting against Elizabeth. What a story. Dynastic ambition, power politics, religious strife, sex and quite a lot of violence. Gorgeous costumes too. No wonder it's had such a hold on the imaginations of dramatists and musicians down the centuries. Schiller's play, Donizetti's opera, films starring the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson. Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens at the British Library in London captures some of the drama and spectacle of the events. The...